Legal Niches

The Big Picture

Posted on March 04, 2008
On Friday, March 7, I will have the opportunity to present at a celebration of International Women's Day sponsored by Heifer International. Heifer is an energetic and can-do non-profit organization whose mission is "to help end world hunger and poverty through self-reliance & sustainability...

A new blog: Commercial Law

Posted on February 28, 2008
The Jurisdynamics Network is pleased to announce a new member of its family of weblogs, Commercial Law. The law of sales, leases, payments, finance, and lending has manifested some of the most dramatic responses by the law to social, economic, and technological change...

The Octopus and the literary canon of agricultural law

Posted on February 18, 2008
Men — motes in the sunshine — perished, were shot down in the very noon of life, hearts were broken, little children started in life lamentably handicapped; young girls were brought to a life of shame; old women died in the heart of life for lack of food...

Lips that touch _____ will never touch mine

Posted on February 14, 2008
She's a vegan; he's an omnivore. Dynise Balcavage and John Gatti make it work.It's Valentine's Day, and Agricultural Law wishes that all its readers can be lucky in love. But for couples with incompatible diets, reports The New York Times' Kate Murphy in I Love You, But You Love Meat, divergent views of food can be a deal-breaker:Sharing meals has always been an important courtship ritual and a metaphor for love...

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Hamilton in the News

Posted on February 03, 2008
Here is a recent op-ed from a familiar face.

Why Teach Agricultural Law?

Posted on February 03, 2008
A recent discussion of programming for next years AALS section meeting has got me thinking. Some time ago, Dean Chen offered a call to arms, suggesting that we should consider why agricultural law deserves a place in law schools and the legal academy...

EQIP in the News

Posted on January 31, 2008
This article recently appeared in the NY Times. Often we see critics of commodity programs and the payments made to what some believe are otherwise profitable individuals and corporations who don't need them. But I've not often seen critics of payments geared at garnering environmental compliance...

2008 AALS Program - Agricultural Law Section

Posted on January 25, 2008
The program was a success. We drew in a great crowd at 3:30 PM on Saturday afternoon in New York City. Below is a recap. The screen shots of the presenter's slides are linked to the presenter's powerpoint materials.Mr. Schutz introduced the speakers, linking together their subjects with the theme of the event...

Reminder - Upcoming Panel Discussion at the AALS

Posted on December 31, 2007
The Section on Agricultural Law will have a panel discussion on the following topic at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the AALS:Energy, Food, and the Environment: Agriculture's FutureThe panelists will discuss the challenges facing agriculture as an energy source...

Hunting and Local Cuisine

Posted on December 15, 2007
My colleague Anthony raises an intriguing issue. The issue of hunting and meat consumption has spawned some interesting perspectives.Consider "The Oil We Eat: Following the Food Chain Back to Iraq" by Richard Manning and published in Harpers Magazine a few years back...

Interesting Take on Local Food

Posted on December 14, 2007
Hunting.

(Un) Happy Cow Campaign Continues

Posted on December 12, 2007
The California Milk Advisory Board (CMBA) developed its "happy cows" campaign quite a few years ago. Their slogan: "Great cheese comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California." Accompanying this cheery message were pictures of cows looking, well - very happy...

Happy Thanksgiving

Posted on November 21, 2007
A nice image, by way of Feminist Law Professors.

Coffee and the law

Posted on November 15, 2007
Our friends at Red Lion Reports have brewed a pair of powerful posts on the connection between coffee and the law. First, Kelly Bozanic revels in caffeine (in the form of coffee and espresso drinks) as her drug of choice. And then Marie Reilly delivers this tour-de-force on the social history of coffee:Coffee has a surprising and so far unexplored social history...

Beyond food and evil (revisited)

Posted on November 15, 2007
Herewith an extension of my original post regarding my paper, Beyond Food and Evil, as reprinted from The Cardinal Lawyer:I am pleased to present this RealPlayer video  of my presentation at the Duke Law Journal's 37th Annual Administrative Law Conference...

Thoughts on Food & Agriculture

Posted on November 10, 2007
An earlier post, Arkansas' LL.M. Program in Agricultural Law announced another recruiting season for the LL.M. program. That post noted an increasing interest in the program on the part of students and practicing attorneys concerned with issues of food law and policy...

Atrazine Brings the Bachelor to Life

Posted on November 06, 2007
When the stork arrives, there is a 50/50 chance that it will bring a girl, Right? Not so, says a team of researchers. Since 1970 there is a "distinct and unexplained trend" of more female births than male. Devra Lee Davis, et al., Declines in Sex Ratio at Birth and Fetal Deaths in Japan and in U...

Bourbon and bluegrass

Posted on November 05, 2007
The New York Times' most recent travel section features a story on the pursuit of bourbon and bluegrass in Kentucky:[Author Steven Kurutz] embarked on a road trip centered on bourbon and bluegrass, exploring the back roads of the state where those two American mainstays trace their deepest roots...

How Sweet It Is

Posted on November 03, 2007
How Sweet It Is Sugar is sweet, especially if you grow sugar beets or sugar cane. In a 2000 report, the GAO concluded that the sugar program produced welfare gains to sugar producers and processors in 1998 totaling about $1 billion. United States Gen...

The Timing is Sweet

Posted on November 03, 2007
Yesterday, Dean Jim Chen, visiting here at the University of Arkansas School of Law as part of our Day with a Dean program delivered a lecture in the Agricultural Law LL.M. Finance & Credit class on his article, Around the World in Eighty Centileters...

Arkansas's LL.M. program in agricultural law

Posted on October 27, 2007
Anthony's post about the grass fed beef designation further evidences the increasingly complex merger between agricultural law and food law.Each year in the Agricultural Law LL.M. Program that I direct, we receive more applications from people interested in studying agricultural law because they are interested in issues of food law and policy...

Grass (forage) Fed Beef Designation

Posted on October 17, 2007
This notice came out today. The main lesson I take from this is that there is no simple way to define much of anything. If you take a look at this, you will also see that the administration sees the measure as one of marketing, not of delineating any particular health benefit that comes from eating grass-fed beef...

Slaughtering Horses and the Dormant Commerce Clause

Posted on October 17, 2007
As many of you know, I've been wallowing in the dormant Commerce Clause and corporate farming laws for a while. One recent DCC case has also caught my eye.Take a look at Cavel Internationa, Inc. v. Madigan (No. 07-2658, 9/21/07) In addition to a very coherent account of the DCC doctrine, the case mentions Bo Derek, John Stuart Mill, and stray cougars that could pose a problem to equine retirement pastures...

Putting the Pieces Together

Posted on October 16, 2007
A recent post observed the possible shortage of workers for agricultural harvests. In yet another post Iris Dement's ?Our Town? was nominated as the ?anthem for American rural life and its slow decline.? While both appear separate and apart from the other they nonetheless share concrete influences and commonalities...

No good deed goes unpunished

Posted on October 16, 2007
In 1973, Minnesota passed an anti-corporate farming bill. (Minn. Stat. § 500.24). The purpose of the statute is "to encourage and protect the family farm as a basic economic unit, to insure it as the most socially desirable mode of agricultural production, and to enhance and promote the stability and well-being of rural society in Minnesota and the nuclear family...

Immigration and Your Lunch

Posted on October 12, 2007
The New York Times has a couple interesting articles recently (with recently being broadly defined) highlighting the close connection between immigration and agriculture. In August, Lisa W. Foderaro highlighted the possible shortage of immigrant apple pickers in New York...

Rural America from a Different Perspective

Posted on October 01, 2007
The posting of Iris Dement's "My Town" was a musical treat - great song by a great artist.Can't quite agree on the anthem idea though. As pretty as the song is, I just can't say it reflects my views on rural life.As a rural resident, I don't see rural life as in decline...

Our Town (revisited)

Posted on September 25, 2007
Herewith a new video of Iris Dement's "Our Town," which I nominate as the anthem for American rural life and its slow decline:LyricsAnd you know the sun's settin' fastAnd just like they say nothing good ever lastsWell, go on now and kiss it goodbye but hold on to your lover'Cause your heart's bound to dieGo on now and say goodbye to our town, to our townCan't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our townGood nightUp the street beside that red neon lightThat's where I met my baby on one hot summer nightHe was the tender and I ordered a beerIt's been forty years and I'm still sitting hereBut you know the sun's settin' fastand just like they say nothing good ever lastsWell, go on now and kiss it goodbye but hold on to your lover'Cause your heart's bound to dieGo on now and say goodbye to our town, to our townCan't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our townGood nightIt's here I had my babies and I had my first kissI've walked down Main Street in the cold morning mistOver there is where I bought my first carIt turned over once but then it never went farAnd I can see the sun settin' fastAnd just like they say nothing good ever lastsWell, go on now and kiss it goodbye but hold on to your lover'Cause your heart's bound to dieGo on now and say goodbye to our town, to our townCan't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our townGood nightI buried my Mama and I buried my PaThey sleep up the street beside that pretty brick wallI bring them flowers about every dayBut I just gotta cry when I think what they'd sayIf they could see how the sun's settin' fastAnd just like they say nothing good ever lastsWell, go on now and kiss it goodbye but hold on to your lover'Cause your heart's bound to dieGo on now and say goodbye to our town, to our townCan't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our townGood nightNow I sit on the porch and watch the lightning bugs flyBut I can't see too good, I've got tears in my eyesI'm leaving tomorrow but I don't wanna goI love you my town, you'll always live in my soulBut I can see the sun's settin' fastAnd just like they say nothing good ever lastsWell, go on I gotta kiss you goodbye but I'll hold to my lover'Cause my heart's 'bout to dieGo on now and say goodbye to my town, to my townCan't you see the sun's settin' down on my town, on my townGood night, good night

Food v. Fuel

Posted on September 17, 2007
Back in April I posted a critique of a Foreign Affairs article by Benjamin Senauer and Ford Runge. If you remember, Senauer and Runge argued that the U.S. ethanol industry could potentially starve the world's poor. As a solution, they proposed that Congress should drop the import tax on Brazilian ethanol...

I-300: A Victim of Judicial Objectivity

Posted on September 11, 2007
Yesterday I had a small epiphany about why I find opinions like Jones v. Gale so frustrating. Very often the courts ignore the things I value when applying their limitless supply of 2-tiered, 3-step tests. I get excited about helping the underdog, small farmers included...

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